Wildlife or Climate: Which is More Important? Do we Have to Choose?
Hart Hagan
Wildlife or Climate: Which is More Important? Do we Have to Choose?
If both are important, what comes first? What if the real connection between wildlife and climate change is grossly misunderstood and underreported?
What is more important, species extinction or warming temperatures?
Let’s question the conventional wisdom and get back to our roots as people willing to protect (carbon-rich) wild beings from the forces that threaten them.
This course will teach you:
How our farmland could again become wildlife habitat
How pesticides impact both wildlife and the climate
How a Mexican ranch is rapidly restoring habitat for migratory birds, including Colorado’s state bird
How beavers create climate-friendly ecosystems
How water--coursing through the soil, plants, animals and fungi--is so vital to climate cooling, as well as all living things
How organic matter (e.g., dead wood and leaves) is vital to both wildlife and the climate
How restoration of wildlife habitat is job number one in addressing climate change
We will explore these and many more questions in the Wildlife & Climate course.
What follows is a lineup of very special Guest Speakers, who will share their wisdom, their expertise and their dynamic adventures in the Wildlife and Climate course, from October 9 through October 30.
Our speakers include:
Entomologist Jonathan Lundgren, PhD, Blue Dasher Farm
Rancher Alejandro Carrillo, Las Damas Ranch
Conservation biologist Joel Berger, PhD, Colorado State University
Filmmaker and ecologist John D. Liu, Ecosystem Restoration Communities
Science, Regulatory and Advocacy Manager Sara Grantham, Beyond Pesticides
Community Policy and Action Manager Rika Gopinath, Beyond Pesticides
Professor Leila Philip, author of Beaverland, College of the Holy Cross
Now check out the story of each speaker and what they can teach us.
Jonathan Lundgren, Entomologist
What if even half of our farmland were teaming with insects? What if insects were not seen as a threat to crops, but part of an ecosystem in which crops might thrive? Currently, our farms are war zones in which insects die while the nutritional value of the food is in steep decline, and farmers go broke every day.
Meanwhile, our farming methods remove carbon from the soil and send it into the air.
Jonathan Lundgren can change all that. With a PhD in entomology and 11 years as an award winning scientist with the US Department of Agriculture, Lundgren now leverages his scientific knowledge to help farmers grow their profits while also growing nutritious food amid thriving ecosystems.
If we will learn from scientist-farmers like Lundgren, then we can produce nutritious food that farmers can sell profitably, while supporting populations of insects and birds and also cleaning up our streams and rivers.
Why is “nobody” talking about this? That’s what we will explore in the Wildlife and Climate course.
Jonathan will speak on October 9 at 12:00 noon (Eastern Time).
Alejandro Carrillo, Rancher
The American West is one of the largest and most rapidly desertifying areas in the world, according to renowned wildlife biologist Allan Savory. Since “water is life” and desertification emits carbon, this is a serious, large-scale problem for the climate.
Alejandro Carrillo has a solution, which he demonstrates on his 30,000 acre ranch in northern Mexico. On Las Damas Ranch, Alejandro practices a type of rotational grazing that restores wildlife habitat, water cycles and carbon cycles.
One result is an abundance of birds not seen in generations on the family-owned ranch. This includes the lark bunting, the state bird of Colorado, as documented by the American Bird Conservancy and reported by author Judith Schwartz.
Register now to hear Alejandro’s unique insights and learn how his practices could be applied to restore the entire American west, to keep it from further desertifying.
Alejandro will speak to the Wildlife & Climate course on October 9 at 7:00 PM (Eastern Time).
Joel Berger, PhD, Conservation Biologist
While some scientists are staring at their computer screen, Joel Berger is dressing up like a polar bear and getting charged by muskoxen, doing his “research” to see how the muskoxen are responding to the increased prevalence of polar bears who are moving off the melting ice and onto the land.
Here is the video where you can see him in action. 2018 Indianapolis Prize Finalist — Dr. Joel Berger
Joel also wrote the article that provides the intellectual underpinnings of this course. The article is An inconvenient misconception: Climate change is not the principal driver of biodiversity loss.
Here is the point of the article: What if climate change is far overrated as a cause of species extinction? What if we are mistakenly blaming climate change for downward trends in wildlife? Do we have time to get this wrong?
Berger and his colleagues are conservation biologists who criticize their own profession for blaming climate change for wildlife decline, when deforestation, pollution, pesticides, overhunting and overfishing are more direct and immediate causes of wildlife decline.
Joel will speak to the Wildlife & Climate course on October 16 at 12:00 noon (Eastern Time).
John D. Liu, filmmaker and ecologist
Filmmaker and ecologist John D. Liu has traveled the world restoring ecosystems. He is founder of Ecosystem Restoration Communities, which span the globe. And he is producer of Hope in a Changing Climate (2009), the 2009 film about how the people of the Loess Plateau in China were lifted out of poverty by restoring the ecosystems on which they depend.
John emphasizes that in any given location, the biomass, biodiversity and organic matter are all related. If you degrade the biodiversity this will degrade the biomass and the organic matter. If you improve the biomass and the organic matter, then the biodiversity will improve, because all three are connected.
John deeply influenced me, your Instructor, via his YouTube content. Here is a sample, which I strongly recommend:
Regreening the desert with John D. Liu | VPRO Documentary | 2012
John D. Liu: Ecosystem Restoration Camps | Soil Food Web School
Restoring Degraded Land for Economies, Communities, Farmers, and Health with John D. Liu
John will speak to the Wildlife & Climate course on October 16 at 7:00 PM (Eastern Time).
Sara Grantham and Rika Gopinath, Beyond Pesticides
Here’s why “Beyond Pesticides” is a uniquely valuable and important organization.
Pesticides have a well-known connection to wildlife and biodiversity, but they have a little-known connection to our climate.
Insecticides kill insects, resulting in the loss of birds, who eat insects. Herbicides kill “weeds” which support many insects and birds in the ecosystem.
But few understand that insecticides and herbicides result in carbon emissions. Herbicides and insecticides are “biocides,” which means that they kill life, causing countless living things to decay and oxidize, emitting carbon into the atmosphere.
When you kill large numbers of non-targeted species, you invariably degrade the ecosystem, resulting in the release of carbon emissions as plants, animals, fungi, bacteria and organic matter decay.
This is the story of modern industrial agriculture, as well as modern forestry and lawn care. We are using chemicals that are harmful to farmers, neighbors, consumers and wildlife.
But because these chemicals are so profitable, the companies that sell them have been able to buy off politicians and the media.
Beyond Pesticides is a rare exception. The people at Beyond Pesticides are among the rare truthtellers who have not been bought off by industry.
Too often, big corporations write a big checks to nonprofit media outlets and advocacy groups, resulting in reporting favorable to industry.
But Beyond Pesticides has resisted compromise.
Sara Grantham and Rika Gopinath speak to the Wildlife & Climate course on October 23 at 12:00 noon (Eastern Time).
Leila Philip, author of Beaverland
Leila Philip, author of Beaverland, will give us important insights into what it takes to help beavers thrive, and how they can also help humans thrive.
North American beaver populations have declined from roughly 300 million to about 15 million. They were killed off for merchantable pelts and for the fertile ground underneath their ponds.
Beavers are a keystone species, meaning they create ecosystems in which many other species can thrive.
We can restore beaver habitat if we choose to. This would control flooding and rehydrate the landscape, raising the water table in the soil profile. Because water is life and everything depends on water, when you hydrate the landscape, you bring the soil, plants, insects and birds back to life.
Leila Philip speak will speak to the Wildlife & Climate course on October 30 at 12:00 noon (Eastern Time).
Conclusion and a Personal Note
A personal note from your instructor.
This course represents the best I have to offer after seven years as a climate advocate.
We have been led down a garden path. We have been sold a bill of goods. We have been taught that if we narrowly focus on carbon, then we will be doing God’s work.
This is a silly and dangerous idea. Nature is complex. It cannot be reduced to one substance (CO2) or one number (415 parts per million).
Plus, when we focus solely on carbon, we are distracted from myriad life forms that contain carbon and will release it if we kill them and degrade their habitat.
But if we protect our fellow species and nurture their habitat, then we have started where we need to start.
The rest is details.
Join us for the Wildlife and Climate course.
Below are my upcoming webinars. For a complete list, please see:
*****
Forests Are Not Just Carbon. Tuesday, October 7 at 7:00 PM (Eastern Time)
Trees and Forests are so much more than storehouses of carbon. We will study an astonishing report from the World Resources Institute describing the dozens of ways trees and forests bring us a livable climate. For example: “Not only do growing trees pull significant amounts of carbon out of the atmosphere, but by encouraging cloud formation … they ensure that more energy from sunlight is reflected back into space.”
This is just one of the ways that forests cool their environment, and this is why some of us assert that plants, trees and forests offer the quickest, cleanest, safest way to cool our climate.
RSVP: Forests are Not Just Carbon. Tuesday, October 7 at 7:00 PM (Eastern Time)
*****
Urban Pollinator Garden Update. Friday, October 10 @ 3:00 PM (Eastern Time)
Come see the latest pictures from my 2/8 of an acre in urban Louisville. You will see lush green plants, colorful blooms, insect visitors, rich soil and invisible water cycles. This is highly relevant to climate change and biodiversity.
RSVP: Urban Pollinator Garden Update. Friday, October 10 @ 3:00 PM (Eastern Time)